#carchesium

[adelicateculturecell]

"Contracting is like very, very effective flinching. If you accidentally touch a hot burner on the stove, you flinch and pull your hand away very quickly. Now imagine if you could not only pull your hand back, but you could actually shrink your hand down into your arm to minimize the threat of the stove even further. Well, the microcosmos does not have stoves (though, I guess it could be said that stoves have a microcosmos--but that's a story for a different day)."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Flinching Saves Lives in the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Carchesium 630x, Spirostomum 100x, Spirostomum 630x, Vorticella 200x, Vorticella 200x, Spirostomum 630x

[adelicateculturecell]

"Calcium ions are used across all of biology to carry information and cause changes in all kinds of biological systems, including the biological system that is you. This reliance on calcium ions is kind of strange. It's very common, but the evolution of these systems relying on calcium is a little weird because calcium ions can interfere with reactions that are key to our cellular metabolism. One recent theory to try and reconcile this contradiction is that the rapid, calcium-driven responses we are looking at right now are part of a much longer evolutionary arc--one built on the need for ancient cells to repair damage to their membranes in order to prevent a fatal influx of calcium ions from their surroundings."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Flinching Saves Lives in the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

[adelicateculturecell]

"Whatever these things look like, you can think of any of these movements not as sudden contractions of muscle fibers, but instead, as chemicals that change shape in different chemical conditions. If the solution they are in has a bunch of calcium ions, the structures are small and tightly coiled, if the solution has a low concentration of calcium ions, they stretch out."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Flinching Saves Lives in the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Flatworm trying to eat Spirostomum 200x, Carchesium 200x, Vorticella 630x, Spirostomum 200x, Spirostomum 630x, Vorticella 200x

[adelicateculturecell]

"Kahl estimated that it took him about 9 months to feel confident in his drawing and identification skills. And from there, he went all out. His first monograph was published in 1926, when he was 49. His last publication came around 1935. And in that period of time, he published 21 papers that totaled around 1800 pages of descriptions and illustrations of around 700 new species of ciliates. Yes, 700."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Schoolteacher Who Discovered 700 Ciliates

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Kahl's drawings of Carchesium, Carchesium 200x, Epistylis 200x, Kahl's drawings of Epistylis , Kahl's drawing of Frontonia, Frontonia 200x

[adelicateculturecell]

"Kahl's contributions extended beyond just uncovering new species. The second age of ciliate discovery, which lasted between 1930 and 1950, was marked not by a need to just uncover new species, but to understand how to better group them. By the end of just the 1930s, there were around 3000 known ciliates to classify, leading to the creation of new taxa and genera that some have called Kahlian classification because of the lables he introduced into it."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Schoolteacher Who Discovered 700 Ciliates

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

[adelicateculturecell]

"When you've been on a journey through the microcosmos, there are some names that start to feel pretty familiar. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek comes up pretty often, as befits a microscopist whose delightful descriptions of the bacteria and protozoans essentially birthed a whole field of research. Then you've got Muller, and your Ehrenberg, your Dujardin--names that endure because of the microbial knowledge they are attached to."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Schoolteacher Who Discovered 700 Ciliates

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Carchesium 630x, Histiobalantium 630x, Monodinium 630x, Paramecium 200x, Linostomella 630x

[adelicateculturecell]

"Now again, whatever the change is for the organism thought, one of the things these species share in common is that the contractions are very, very fast--so much so that it's taken high speed cinematography for scientists to start to figure out how it works. Stentors, spriostomum, and vorticella all condense to fractions of their original length in a matter of milliseconds. A contracting spirostomum can experience forces of around 14g. For comparison, an elite fighter pilot doesn't ever experience more than 9 gs of force. For vorticella, the rapid contraction of their stalk moves them at about 1200 body lengths per second. That is very fast. That's the equivalent of a cheetah running a mile in a second."

Journey to the Microcosmos- Flinching Saves Lives in the Microcosmos

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

[adelicateculturecell]

"Kahl's classification system may not have lasted, but maybe that's part of its value. Our understanding of microbes is marked by so many stories of how we have attempted to classify and reclassify and reclassify again. And given how many species we have yet to encounter, it is a task that will likely never end. During his lifetime, his work invited its share of criticism. Some took issue with his methods, while others disagreed with the definitions he used to distinguish species. But while Kahl acknowledged the feedback, his careful and thorough work would produce description that still endure and inform our understanding of ciliates."

Journey to the Microcosmos- The Schoolteacher Who Discovered 700 Ciliates

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs